Stacked phased array coils for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in magnetic resonance imaging

A new concept of using a stacked phased coil array to increase the signal-to-circuit noise ratio (SCNR) in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is introduced. Unlike conventional phased coil arrays, the proposed stacked phased coil array is constructed by stacking the coil elements closely together in the vertical direction. Through a proper combination of the coil terminal voltages, the SCNR is shown to increase with the square root of the number of coil elements. A prototype two-element array is constructed and an experimental method is designed to determine the combiner coefficients in a simulated MRI electromagnetic field environment. The experimental results show that the mutual coupling effect among the array coils can be totally removed and the combiner output voltage increases with the number of coil elements. This demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed method.